Tuesday, 31 July 2007

Trainfellow in a car

My fellow commuter VISAman gave me a call the other day. We have both been inconvenienced by the fact that our train line was washed away by an inconsiderate and unhelpful body of water. VISAman lives quite close and has like me, been without running water for about a week...

Anyway... VISAman and I shared the car to Reading. Very pleasant journey which was not punctuated by any of the usual utterings from a "Train Manager". In fact it did occur to me as we drove past such places as Swindon and Newbury that we ought to provide our own voice over to the journey - sadly we didn't get round to it.

However, the journey to work in a car raised a whole new set of questions about commuting and how you interact....

I think it's ok to have a conversation with the person in the car next to you - no rules about that. But how to do you relate to your fellow road users that you see every day or the chap who you see walking to work at about the same place everyday - or if you are late, he is a bit too far down the road...

I'd appreciate any thoughts you may have on this. A whole new set of etiquette.

2 comments:

Hmmm...the car thing is difficult. I used to wave at a little girl and her Dad who I saw every single day for a year when I was walking to work at Thames Water. She was an angelic little curly haired blond thing sitting on the front of his bike but occasionally it got a little embarassing because I couldn't ever not wave. Once you start something (especially where children are concerned) you need to carry it on. However, when I saw him in a church a couple of years later and he recognised me, I discovered that it meant quite a lot to them that I'd waved! To pedestrians tho, you would actually be just another faceless car user in the morning. Quite often you can't actually see into cars due to reflections etc. I can't see it working.